U.S. Rep. Rush Holt on hiding torture, and finding it

John O'Boyle/The Star-LedgerU.S. Rep. Rush Holt is a member of the Select Committee on Intelligence.

The U.S. Justice Department recently declined to press charges against CIA officer Jose Rodriguez, the former head of clandestine services, who destroyed tapes made during interrogations of terror suspects in Thailand in 2002. “The heat is nothing compared to what it would be if the tapes ever got into the public domain,” Rodriguez wrote in an e-mail.

Rep. Rush Holt (D-12th Dist.), a member of the Select Committee on Intelligence, spoke about the case with Tom Moran, editorial page editor of The Star-Ledger. An edited transcript appears below.

Q. What do we know about the contents of the tapes?

A. Evidently, they showed practices that any reasonable person would call torture, practices we would never want carried out against Americans.

Q. Why did CIA officers destroy them?

A. It was not for lack of space in their storeroom. They destroyed them because they contained things they didn’t want anyone else to know. In particular, so that Congress would not learn about them.

Q. Is it reasonable to prosecute CIA officers for these practices when Justice Department lawyers told the CIA it was permissible to waterboard, to slam defendants into walls, to strip them naked and deprive them of sleep?

A. Sure it is. The CIA can’t be exempt. The more serious the matter, the more comprehensive the oversight has to be, and this is a very serious matter. This is probably the No. 1 recruiting tool for terrorists, the treatment of detainees.

Q. What about the lawyers who approved this?

A. Nobody respects an organization where the senior people throw underlings under the bus to protect themselves. If it is policy from the higher ups, the sanctions — including legal sanctions — should go all the way to the top. A lot of what came out of the Justice Department in the early years after 9/11 was pretty shoddy legal work. Maybe it was hysteria. And maybe they doctored their memos to please the vice president.

Q. The House passed a law requiring the CIA to preserve tapes of interrogations and the Senate blocked it. Why?

A. The Senate acts in mysterious ways. I wrote that legislation after talking to interrogators about the difficulties they have with foreign languages. We are notoriously poorly prepared in languages, and the tapes can help them understand the answers. Then, the Abu Ghraib and other revelations came out, and it was apparent we needed both to protect interrogators from false charges, and to protect detainees from inhumane treatment.

Q. Do we need to use torture to get information about possible attacks?

A. No. Any good interrogator will tell you torture does not bring you reliable information — but worse than that, this has led to a mushrooming of antagonism toward the United States. That only increases the danger to us.

Q. Does Congress really know what the CIA is doing?

A. Hardly a month goes by when I don’t learn of something from the newspapers, or some outside source, of what’s been going on in the intelligence community. They have not been generally forthcoming. But it’s much better than it was four years ago. I think we’ve made a difference.

Q. If I knew everything you knew, would I feel safer or more vulnerable?

A. You would be pleased with the level of dedication and patriotism of the people in intelligence. I don’t think you’d be satisfied with the intelligence product. But these are well-meaning and dedicated people.